“When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. . . . Jesus wept.”
John 11:33, 35
God is not put off by your grief. The shortest verse in the Bible is proof. “Jesus wept.”
If Jesus was not afraid to cry, surely you should not be either. But what we typically miss here is that Jesus’s grief was mixed with anger. In addition to the sympathetic tears he shed for his own loss, and for the others who were grieving, Jesus was “greatly troubled,” or agitated. This is important to understand, since it reminds us that death is unnatural. It disturbs us, and it should. But, as Christians, it should also deepen our appreciation of the victory which Jesus secured for us through his own death, burial, and resurrection.
When Jesus observed Mary weeping (wailing), he groaned in his spirit and became angry within himself. In his classic essay, “The Emotional Life of Our Lord,” first published in 1912, theologian B. B. Warfield writes, “What John tells us, in point of fact, is that Jesus approached the grave of Lazarus, in a state, not of uncontrollable grief, but of irrepressible anger. He did respond . . . with quiet, sympathetic tears: ‘Jesus wept’ (verse 36). But the emotion which tore his breast and clamored for utterance was just rage.”[1] By “just rage,” Warfield did not mean only rage. It was “just rage,” meaning his anger was intense and divinely appropriate.
That is, “Jesus raged within himself.” Warfield explains that this “inwardly restrained fury produced a profound agitation of his whole being, one of the manifestations of which was tears.”
But what, and who, was this controlled anger directed at? Jesus’s anger was focused on death and the devil. “Why did the sight of the wailing of Mary and her companions enrage Jesus?” Warfield asks, and then answers his own question: “The spectacle of the distress of Mary and her companions enraged Jesus because it brought poignantly home to his consciousness the evil of death, its unnaturalness” and caused him to “[burn] with rage against the oppressor of men. . . . What John does for us in this particular statement is to uncover to us the heart of Jesus, as he wins for us our salvation.”
The Bible assures us that when the appointed time came, God sent forth his Son, Jesus, the seed of the woman to crush the head of the serpent (Galatians 4:4; Genesis 3:15). He did this on the cross, while the unrestrained fury of God was unleashed upon sin (the first cause of death), and the devil. Jesus died in your place so that “through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Hebrews 2:14–15). Worthy is the Lamb who was slain (Revelation 5:12) and who, three days after offering himself, arose victorious to defeat the devil, and purchase redemption for sinners!
This would be a good time to thank Jesus for dying for you and delivering you from the fear of death by his resurrection. Join the voices of many angels by praising Jesus and saying, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Revelation 5:12).
Hear more from Paul Tautges on the topic of grief at this year’s Summer Institute Pre-Conference. Tickets on sale now!
[1] B. B. Warfield, The Emotional Life of Our Lord (New York: Ravenio Books, 2013), Kindle.
*Excerpted from A Small Book for the Hurting Heart: Meditations on Loss, Grief, and Healing © 2020 by Paul Tautges. Used with permission of New Growth Press. May not be reproduced without prior written permission.
